How Green started
I grew up in the sixties. My mother kept a vegetable garden to feed her 5 children. Working too hard, she got a heart disease and had to stop. But the idea of connecting with nature and taking care remained. In the 70ies she founded a citizen’s movement where they collected used plastic items and tried to find enterprises for recycling. This was long before the plastic waste topic entered into public consciousness.
When I lived in Berlin I had an old farmhouse in the then so called “Westdeutschland”. My biggest joy when I arrived there, was to find what had grown in my garden while I was at University. I had started out with physics, but then I changed the subject. Today though, I am coming back to it. For 30years now, I have been living in the Italian countryside, in close contact with nature, with solar panels on the roof and organic farming.
Physics and climate change
Now I am keenly interested in physics and other sciences. Why? Because the climate change topic is filling up every corner and people try to tell me that my car is causing the death of our planet.
Climate change was not in the forefront of my mind so far, as I haven’t been watching the latest news for decades. Whenever the weather is different from what we would like, I certainly started to say: “climate change?” as a possible explanation. People always complain about the weather – but, weather is not the same as climate! Before the climate change discussions we didn’t have a scapegoat, except God himself who dared to send us rain or heat when we didn’t want it. Our memories are short; every time we think: “this is exceptional, it has never been like this” etc. it is not necessarily true. It is just the way we humans deal with reality.
If you don’t go for it, you are guilty
Now, when I had to defend myself why I didn’t want to join the “Friday for Future” manifestations, I started to get interested. I get accused of being in favor of the death of future generations –
WHAT?
If people really believe things like that, then it is time to find out what information they are fed, what myths they are believing. Such an accusation is really heavy and should have some real fundament when you utter it.
The scientist in me woke up and together with the psychologist the integralist and the life-experienced part of me started to research.
The psychological basis
When you live in another country than were you were born and grown up, you keep the memory of your home country often, at the point where you left it. You don’t live the changes, you believe, it is like then, when you knew it. It is often an awakening in itself, when you realise that things have changed there, while you were away. But this is also a huge chance because you have the possibility to see things from a distance: you are not involved in parties and power games, preferences and dislikes. You are somewhat neutral while understanding the mentality of the people inside out.
How development works and the problem with green.
When humans develop, they naturally distance themselves of what they were and believed in the previous stage. If the development goes right, the insights and skills of the previous stages will be integrated and used appropriately. Green rejects science and acts out of the emotional center. This is understandable, but it grows into paradoxes which people in the green mindset are unable to even perceive, let alone address. The contradictions they create in their minds and actions are huge. As long as they are not in decision power, it is no problem. Everyone has the right to get himself – or herself – into trouble. But if the political powers bring their own contradictions as guiding force into the decision making process, everyone is impacted.
The green-blue-purple potpourri is not science
The present climate debate is a strange mixture of green ideals, conventional thinking and magical beliefs. Science is used in scientistic ways: The ideological scientists start with what they want to show. Then they look for arguments, or research results, which feed their assumptions. Real science, instead, is open to the outcome. It starts with a hypothesis and tries to falsify it (instead of trying to prove it!). Serious scientists assume their hypothesis to be proven only as long as they cannot find any valid contradictory argument. They use evidence instead of purely mathematical models which can be changed at will by just changing one parameter. With the last sort of science you can create whatever outcome you want. (Read “The science delusion or “Science set free” by Rupert Sheldrake”
People’s habit of fearing death
Every generation has its version of doomsday, nothing new under the sky. But when this comes out of fundamentalist beliefs in simple causes, in the “climate” case the CO2, then it is time to rethink the story. Decisions are being made which are very likely to create real damage in the short term and for the people right now (as opposed to possible humans in decades or centuries from now),.
Fundamentalist progressives – progressive fundamentalsists?
The weirdest thing, in my eyes, is that the defenders of human made climate change believe to be progressive, at the forefront of society, while in fact they are mainstream. They have succeeded to instill their ideas everywhere and are dominating the discourse. Other voices are repressed, for instance by untruthful Wikipedia entries, which are full of not proven accusations and polemics, in which the described people have no voice at all. Scientists who try their best to give a bigger picture are insulted and accused of whatever seems to make the most effect in the eyes of the listeners.
In short: the previously liberal Germany has entered into the “politically correct” society, where people are not heard and they are fought against if they happen to speak against the ruling ideology.
Repeating the errors of the past?
I am really wondering if we are not repeating the last century? Totalitarian societies seem to be the goal, everywhere. The idea of democracy is beautiful, its birth painful and long. And its delicate flower is very prone to be destroyed by people who are not yet ready to be responsible citizens, who need an authority to tell them what they should believe and think and do. Erich Fromm wrote a book about that in 1941, in the face of WWII. “The Fear of Freedom”
We seem to be in the same situation now, again, where people prefer to live in ideologies instead of being open themselves to reality, evidence and logical empathic thinking, free of falling into the trap of the triangle: victim – perpetrator – rescuer. The climate change warriors want to “save the world” by imposing their simple and limited ideas on people of the rest of the world who are less noisy and get cut off when they dare to open the mouth.
The fallacy of believing in simple solutions.
The world is far more complex than imposing CO2 taxes and everything will be fine. It will be problematic, it will increase the gap between rich and poor in the rich countries and it simply cannot be followed in developing countries if they don’t want to buy into their own suicide.
So why should we throw away our living standards for an idea which by no means is proven to be true? People are told white lies, incomplete or manipulated research data, ideological interpretations and more, they are abused like the masses who wanted the “total war” 90 years ago.
We humans are not able to think for ourselves when we are caught in fear. The climate change movement is spreading fear in an unbelievable way.
Green started with the desire to protect NATURE.
Before all that, we tried to protect nature by the justified preoccupation of losing too many species. Now the mass murder of birds and the destruction of woods and beautiful landscapes are ignored when it comes to windmills. The solar panel fields are not only ugly, but they destroy huge areas of nature and the natural habitat of many animals.
Shouldn’t we begin to think that there is something not right here?
Do you want to protect nature now? Or do you agree to destroy it now for a completely arbitrary and insecure scenario in the future?
CONCLUSION
Having said all that I want to underline that I don’t ignore that the climate is changing. Everything in life is changing all the time and it is useless to try to keep things as they are. I am not sure that CO2 is the culprit, there are scientists who proof that our globe is living in cycles of warm and cold and the previous warm periods were certainly not caused by cars and airplanes.
I am for unbiased research which takes into account as many factors as possible, from sun and clouds to regional differences. (The Arctic had increased in ice for a few years when already everyone spoke about global warming. Maybe it is not global? A detailed reading of data HERE).
I am for looking at the methods how the research is done and how “truth” is constructed. And I am for radical consideration of the do-ability and the impact which the decisions will have on all areas of life, in Europe and on the planet.
Bjorn Lomborg has done an extensive study on what to do to make the world a better place. How much money spent can do how much good to people in the world. Infant nutrition is in the first places in huge positive correlation, climate investments – you probably didn’t know! – have a minus correlation. He has written detailed books (one here) and has given easily understandable talks (for instance this one). Why not get informed about that when you want to be helpful for the people on this planet?
The Troyan Horse is lurking everywhere behind the corner!
Last but not least: “Follow the money”! Who is earning on the climate change fear? And who will be paying it – or better: is already paying it? As long as we do not consider the other side of the medal we are likely to make huge and maybe irreparable errors which will be load for the generations to come – other than CO2!
The color code mentioned in this article indicate levels of development in SPIRAL DYNAMICS
I “hear” you Heidi but to say that there is no scientific evidence that CO2 is not good for the planet seems a bit over the top and that the green movement is just a romantic deluded idea, as far as I’m concerned is not right either. What was Rachel Carson doing then? And Greenpeace? You forget to talk about our way of living which obviously needs to change for a variety of reasons (even if climate change is something inevitable in which we as human beings have no part- What about the plastic pollution? The waste of resources? The extinction of species? Industrial farming? Overfishing? Consumerism with exploitation of cheap labour. The quality of life being run by robots? The way I see it, this is all part of “climate change”. What Greta has done in my opinion is something similar to what we felt in the sixties (of which you did not take part) where young people realise that perhaps after all they have some power to change things, and this is a good thing (even if deluded)! As always, nice to discuss with you! Ella
Ella, you know that I agree on all that: diminishing the waste, recycle plastic and use it as little as possible etc. I am doing it as much as I can without getting obsessed by it. And I have spent – and am still spending – a lot of money on my photovoltaic implant. It would have cost me very much less if I never had bought solar panels and just bought the energy from the electric company. So I am paying for it, and I am ok with it. It is just an illusion to think that renewables are gratis or cheaper, the exact opposite is the case.
Fortunately there are individuals and groups who really DO something, like opening shops where they sell stuff without plastic wrapping etc. Imagine, if all the people on the Friday for Future manifestations would plant a tree and take care for its growth: How much CO2 would be “eliminated” by the plants! That’s what the protesters need to do instead of demanding change which most of them, deep in their heart, don’t really want, because that would mean restrict themselves in many ways, beginning with iphones etc.
Other argument: When you cut down the possibility to easily visit other countries by increasing the prices too much so that poorer people cannot afford it, this is enabling “othering” and war mentality. The huge achievement for peace in Europe was the initiative of youth exchange between Germany and France, to get to know each other and to abandon the idea of “enemy”. We need that badly!